Department of Community Medicine, Mercer University School of Medicine, 33 West 11th Street, Columbus, GA, 31902, USA.
HEC Forum. 2021 Jun;33(1-2):143-154. doi: 10.1007/s10730-021-09440-0. Epub 2021 Jan 19.
The year 2020 has yielded twin crises in the United States: a global pandemic and a public reckoning with racism brought about by a series of publicized instances of police violence toward Black men and women. Current data indicate that nationally, Black Americans are three times more likely than White Americans to contract Covid-19 (with further variance by state), a pattern that underscores the more general phenomenon of health disparity among Black and White Americans (Oppel et al. in The New York Times 2020; APM Research Lab Staff in APM Research Lab 2020). Once exposed, Black Americans are twice as likely to die of the virus. Unsurprisingly, Black Americans report higher levels of fear of Covid-19 than their White peers, but they also report higher levels of hesitancy toward a Covid-19 vaccine. This paper explores why this apparent discrepancy exists. It also provides practical recommendations for how government and public health leaders might address vaccine hesitancy in the context of the twin crises of 2020.
2020 年，美国爆发了双重危机：一场全球大流行和一场公众对警察暴力对待黑人和女性的种族主义的清算。目前的数据表明，全美范围内，黑人感染新冠病毒的几率是白人的三倍（各州情况有所不同），这种模式凸显了黑人和白人美国人之间更普遍的健康差距现象（Oppel 等人，《纽约时报》，2020 年；APM 研究实验室工作人员，APM 研究实验室，2020 年）。一旦感染，黑人死于该病毒的几率是白人的两倍。毫不奇怪，黑人对新冠病毒的恐惧程度高于他们的白人同龄人，但他们对接种新冠病毒疫苗的犹豫程度也更高。本文探讨了这种明显差异存在的原因。它还为政府和公共卫生领导人如何在 2020 年的双重危机背景下解决疫苗犹豫问题提供了实际建议。
